Best way to teach Sight words to kids

[asha]

DS is now 4 years old and wants to read. He is very good with the alphabet sounds. I want to start teaching him sight words.

I know there are a whole lot of websites that assist in this. Now DS is extremely active and has a whole lot of energy. He is getting extremely distracted with the games and pictures and stuff on the websites. I guess I need a really low tech way of teaching him about the sight words.

He will actually making up games and stories about the games instead of getting the words there.

How did you teach your child how to read?

BTW, We have tried starfall already. We have the BOB Books and we love it so far.

Thanks ladies,
Asha

[peasprout]

Have you tried flash cards? I bought some at Target (or you can make your own) and we played a little game with them. Whenever DD or DS got a word right, they got to keep the card. At the end we counted the cards they had and they loved trying to out do themselves. Now they breeze through them so fast.

[AngelaS]

I've used Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons in the past and this time I'm using The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. We skipped the first 26 lessons since she knows all the letter sounds. When we come to a sight word, it gets written on a flash card. Every day when we sit down to read, she reads the flashcards to me first. It's amazing how quickly they learn them!

[nfowife]

Yes, flash cards are the way to go. Sight words are best learned through memorization. When I taught we used to do a home/school "program" where each child had a set of sight word flashcards and 2 rings (the kind that are in a 3 ring binder, but loose if that makes sense....the name is escaping me right now!). As the child learned each word we'd add it to their ring from the ring that had all the sight words they needed to know. We'd add 2 or 3 new words each week and they would take it home to work on it with their parents and we'd go through it with each child on Fridays (mixing up the order). If they knew all the words on their ring (old and new) they got a sticker on a chart.

[BeachBum]

I haven't tried it, but my mom a kindergarten teacher suggested that I make flash cards for DS (age 2) and tape them to corresponding items in the house. Once he got used to seeing them there, he could play by putting them back with the right object.

For words like at, the, a, etc of course this wont work but it might be a fun way to get started with flash cards.

[Bean606]

I highly recommend the box of Alphabet Books by Baby Einstein. There are 26 books with three pages each, one for each letter of the alphabet. Each page has a word with a picture of the item that starts with that letter. DS is only 19 months old, and already recognizes words that are in these books when he sees them in other contexts. i.e., dog, cat, hand, eye - he can "read" these words if he sees them elsewhere. I was amazed, because we are obviously not trying to teach him how to read at this point, but just having exposure to these books seems to have done something for him.

[jenmcadams]

Defnitely check out www.starfall.com We used it (the Learn to Read section) over winter break to keep my Kindergartener reading. It has some sight word games, etc.

[californiagirl]

Try having him find all the places the word occurs on a page in a book.

For anything that's a noun, try memory cards or dominos -- basically any game where you normally match two things, make one of them the word and one a picture. Or even the same word in different fonts.

We do a lot of reading where I have DD read some of the words. To start with, it was all exciting words like "dog", but now I get her to do "a" and "the" and "and" and "said" as well...

Jan Brett has some really pretty sight word lists... http://www.janbrett.com/games/jan_br..._list_main.htm
http://www.janbrett.com/games/flash_..._list_main.htm

[overcome]

Originally Posted by BeachBum

I haven't tried it, but my mom a kindergarten teacher suggested that I make flash cards for DS (age 2) and tape them to corresponding items in the house. Once he got used to seeing them there, he could play by putting them back with the right object.

Here is a nice set of premade cards. They are really for a classroom, but I'm sure you have many of these items in your house.
http://www.carsondellosa.com/cd2/Pro...abels&oid=3318

And here are some lovely tactile sight words cards by Lakeshore:
http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/seo...02075524~~.jsp

I teach 1st grade, and give this idea sheet to my parents for studying spelling words, but the ideas could easily be adapted to sight words. Of course some may be too advance for your 4 year old, but I think you'd have a lot of fun with some of them:
http://www.msrossbec.com/spelling_practice.pdf


Whatever you do, just make it fun and your child will learn them!

[hellokitty]

Originally Posted by californiagirl

Jan Brett has some really pretty sight word lists... http://www.janbrett.com/games/jan_br..._list_main.htm
http://www.janbrett.com/games/flash_..._list_main.htm

Thank you for sharing the jan brett lists! They are just what I was looking for!